Tall and ruddy, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 73, was among the poets who read from their works. He read a sampling of the poetry that got him into trouble with Soviet authorities in the early 1960s:

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

I would like to be born in every country!
Have a passport for them all!
To throw all foreign offices in panic!
Be every fish in every ocean and every dog in the streets of the world!
I don't want to bow down before any idols…
But I would like to plunge into Lake Baikal and surface somewhere
Why not in the Mississippi…

The standing-room-only crowd in the poetry tent also heard the reassuring words of 78-year old Donald Hall, the recently-named 14th Poet Laureate of the United States, who said poetry in this country is alive and well. "The greatest growth has been the growth of poetry readings. Back when I was a kid there was very few. Robert Frost did a good many. But no other poets did. If they were alive today, they'd be asked to read three times a day."

Poet Laureate Donald Hall

Hall and Yevtushenko and about 70 other writers addressed the National Book Festival crowds under rows of white, open-air tents, reading their works, sharing stories about their lives, and signing their books. Co-sponsored by the Library of Congress and First Lady Laura Bush, the festival is designed to inspire a passion for reading and learning literature, especially among young people, like the five teenagers who followed each other to the same stage and microphones shared by celebrated poets Hall and Yevtushenko.

The young people, who had recently won national recognition for their interpretive recitations at a poetry-reading contest sponsored by the federally-funded National Endowment for the Arts, reprised their award-winning performances of classical and contemporary poetry -- all of it committed to memory. (click here to hear samples of their reading)

NEA spokeswoman Paulette Beete says these teenagers were among more than 120,000 young people who competed in the NEA-sponsored contest called Poetry Out Loud.  "It is really important to get young people out to read. What's the great thing about Poetry Out Loud is that we're encouraging them to memorize great poems so they get involved in poetry," Beete says. "At the same time, we're also teaching them to be public speakers, to have confidence, to do the kind of thinking you need to really engage literature on a deep level."

Jackson Hille, national champion, NEA's Poetry Out Loud competition

The young people's poetry readings -- and the National Book Festival -- will help enrich the lives of a new generation, says NEA official Hope O'Keeffe. "We're hoping that these tens of thousands of high school students now reciting poetry will carry it to their homes, schools, and families -- and throughout their rest of their lives, they will start to see poetry as part of our public culture."

Inside the Poetry Tent, audience reactions to the performance and discussions were mixed. "I read, write, and memorize poetry. That's my Alzheimer's prevention," a woman at the festival noted. "In the car on the way to work, I memorize two lines of poetry a day. By the end of the week or month, whatever, I have another poem in my memory." "Sometimes, I write love poems and give it to my significant other, but most of it's just for me," one man said.

But another said, "It's hard for me to understand what's really going on in poetry. So I'm into mystery, thrillers, biography and fiction. I love it." At the 2006 National Book Festival, there was something for him to enjoy as well, and for everyone who loves to read.